Hopefully all this nonsense over the danger of Islamic terrorists turns out to be nonsense -- not attempting to argue -- but it is important to face reality ======== [snip] Those who complain of “forever wars” seem to ignore the reason we were in Afghanistan in the first place, or they misstate it, as Mr. Biden did in this instance. We were never in Afghanistan to participate in its civil war. We went there to prevent a murderous gang from regaining control of Afghanistan, where they ruled 20 years ago and where they enabled an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil.
The war with that gang and its affiliates won’t end because the U.S. has quit. Nothing we know about the Taliban, much less anything that we have seen in the last month, suggests that they are ready to quit. Thursday’s bombings appear to have been the work of a rival gang, ISIS-K. Mr. Biden called it “an archenemy of the Taliban,” but the two groups both hate the U.S. and believe it’s glorious to kill Americans. It’s a shame they can’t both lose, as someone said in a different context—but whoever wins will make Afghanistan a haven for anti-American terrorists.
[all of it]
The ‘Forever War’ Hasn’t Ended
Thursday’s attacks were a reminder that ‘the enemy always gets a vote.’ With the Afghanistan pullout, the long war against jihadists has become more daunting.
By Paul Wolfowitz Aug. 27, 2021 1:54 pm ET
President Biden, like his two immediate predecessors, seems to think you can end “forever wars” simply by leaving them. But Thursday’s unprovoked attack, on people who were fleeing and those who were helping them, demonstrates the truth of the soldier’s adage that “the enemy always gets a vote.”
On the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, the president declared that he wouldn’t ask “our troops to fight on endlessly in another country’s civil war, taking casualties, suffering life-shattering injuries, leaving families broken by grief and loss. This is not in our national-security interest. It is not what the American people want.”
The appeal is easy to understand. Even as a civilian, I’ve seen enough of those life-shattering injuries, enough of the grief and loss of Gold Star families, to know that I don’t want it to continue for one day more than necessary.
But what is necessary? Those who complain of “forever wars” seem to ignore the reason we were in Afghanistan in the first place, or they misstate it, as Mr. Biden did in this instance. We were never in Afghanistan to participate in its civil war. We went there to prevent a murderous gang from regaining control of Afghanistan, where they ruled 20 years ago and where they enabled an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people on American soil.
The war with that gang and its affiliates won’t end because the U.S. has quit. Nothing we know about the Taliban, much less anything that we have seen in the last month, suggests that they are ready to quit. Thursday’s bombings appear to have been the work of a rival gang, ISIS-K. Mr. Biden called it “an archenemy of the Taliban,” but the two groups both hate the U.S. and believe it’s glorious to kill Americans. It’s a shame they can’t both lose, as someone said in a different context—but whoever wins will make Afghanistan a haven for anti-American terrorists.
The Taliban feel inspired by their victory over the U.S., which they portray as replicating the historic victory of the Afghan resistance over the Soviet Union in the 1980s—even though the group didn’t exist until after the Soviets had left. Almost all the leadership of the anti-Soviet resistance supported the U.S. after 9/11. The Taliban—which was strongly supported by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence beginning in the early 1990s—drew on a new generation of fanatics who had been educated in Pakistani madrassas.
When Americans were asked in a poll last May whether they favored withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, without any context or qualification, 69% said yes. Had that same poll asked whether they favored withdrawing American troops and handing Afghanistan to a terrorist regime that could permit al Qaeda (and others) to re-establish terrorist bases and training camps, support for withdrawal would surely have been considerably less. As Americans watched that outcome unfold in the past few weeks, support for withdrawal had already plummeted by 20 points as of a week ago.
The terrible recent events in Afghanistan will hang like a dark cloud over the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11. But it should also be an occasion for defiance, and for pride in the Americans who fought, sacrificed and successfully protected our country for two decades from further mass-casualty attacks—something that seemed impossible 20 years ago, when people talked about having to adjust to a “new normal” of persistent large-scale terrorism.
The coming anniversary should also be an occasion for the president to declare his determination to sustain that record for the years ahead. To do so convincingly, Mr. Biden will have to put aside the excuse making and blame shifting of recent weeks and talk to Americans with the candor we deserve. He needs to restore his credibility for his own sake and for the sake of our country.
The candor this moment requires would be difficult for any occupant of the White House, but here are four things that he and his team should acknowledge:
First, the war against terrorists is going to be very long. It won’t end with the capture of a capital or a surrender ceremony on an American battleship. But long wars aren’t the worst kind. The wars with Japan and Germany, which started nearly 75 years ago, each lasted less than four years, but ended with more than 400,000 U.S. military deaths and the first uses of nuclear weapons in war. Decisive victory isn’t necessarily better than “forever war” if a long commitment can keep America safe at a much lower cost in American lives.
Second, it was a mistake for Donald Trump to trust the Taliban and for Mr. Biden to ignore the Taliban’s aggressive opposition to a peaceful outcome. The rush to get out and the failure to respond to Taliban aggression hastened the collapse of the Afghan army and the chaotic rush for the exits, which created the conditions for Thursday’s attacks.
Third, choosing to avoid “forever war” by abandoning our Afghan allies was both costly and dishonorable. Exactly as Churchill said to Neville Chamberlain after the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” And now we have lost the Afghan army, which, whatever its failings, helped keep the Taliban at bay with much-reduced costs in American lives and money.
Mr. Biden should have known to expect this because something similar happened 10 years ago when we withdrew our forces from Iraq. Lacking U.S. air support and advisory capabilities on which the Iraqi army had grown to depend, it collapsed under an assault by Islamic State. Three years after the withdrawal, President Obama had to rush 1,500 troops back to Iraq to assist in the fight to drive out ISIS. By 2016 that number had grown to 5,000.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was far more damaging and abrupt because it began on short notice at the height of the summer fighting season. When the Taliban began its major offensive on schedule in May, the U.S. and its coalition partners were too busy dismantling bases in Afghanistan to provide the air support and intelligence that had enabled the Afghans to repel Taliban attacks for the previous seven years. That was undoubtedly a major factor in the collapse of the Afghan will to fight, something that has happened to more-capable armies elsewhere in past conflicts.
Fourth, the president was wrong to disparage the bravery of the Afghans, 66,000 of whom have died defending their country—nearly 30 times the number of American combat deaths in Afghanistan. Giving the impression that the U.S. has borne the brunt of the fighting is virtually designed to make Americans say it’s time to quit.
So too is exaggerating the cost to the U.S. of keeping the relatively small presence needed to provide that backbone of air support and intelligence on which the Afghans came to depend. Americans could have been told that U.S. combat deaths had been averaging around 20 a year since we switched to a largely advisory mission in 2015, and that the financial costs were a fraction of what they have averaged over the past 20 years. Then they would have seen those 20 years of human and financial costs in a different light, especially compared with the costs of mass-casualty terrorist attacks. Now the Taliban victory could reverberate far beyond Afghanistan’s borders and inspire terrorists around the world.
The president was right to say we shouldn’t remain in Afghanistan to do “nation building,” but wrong to imply that we still were. No one should have expected Afghanistan to become a modern democracy overnight. There may well have been overly ambitious hopes for our mission in the past, but a small presence of 3,500 U.S. troops, which could have made an important difference for the Afghan army, would have no such mandate. Instead, like a gardener who pulls up weeds to allow plants to grow, keeping the Taliban off the backs of the Afghan people would have enabled them to continue some of their impressive successes, particularly in educating girls and women, successes that are being extinguished under the Taliban’s medieval tyranny.
Nations aren’t built by outsiders; they need to grow organically. But that growth requires the kind of secure environment that the U.S. helped to provide South Korea. As late as the 1960s, South Korea was described by knowledgeable observers as a hopeless basket case with no natural resources, riddled with corruption and burdened with a Confucian ethic that teaches that gentlemen don’t work. Half a century of American support helped the South Korean army defend the country from the North while South Koreans transformed their country into a modern state.
Even if Mr. Biden finds the courage to acknowledge these hard truths, words aren’t enough. The administration also needs to speak with action. Three kinds of actions are particularly critical to get the U.S. out of this hole:
First and most urgent, attend to the safety of Americans, citizens of allied nations, and Afghans now endangered in Afghanistan because they assisted in the fight against the Taliban. The Taliban shouldn’t be permitted to dictate the terms under which we conduct such a morally and strategically vital mission—not when we have 6,000 troops and the air power to back them up, and not when the Taliban’s chief backer, Pakistan, depends on subsidies from the West and the Arab Gulf states to keep its economy afloat. Pakistan and the Taliban should be put on notice that they will pay a price for obstructing the peaceful evacuation of Americans and our friends.
Even better would be to get an emergency United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing support for the creation of safe exit routes, as suggested in these pages by Paula Dobriansky and Paul Saunders. That would also require the president to extend the evacuation for as long as necessary to permit orderly departures, which would reduce the opportunities for terrorist attacks like Thursday’s.
Second, with official Chinese media boastfully warning that “once a war breaks out” the U.S. will abandon Taiwan (among others), as it did the Afghans, there needs to be more visible action and coordination with Japan and our other allies to strengthen deterrence—economic as well as military—to forestall an attack on Taiwan.
Third, in the wake of the Taliban victory, more needs to be done to assure the weaker Persian Gulf countries that the U.S. will protect them against Iran. That won’t be easy, particularly for a president who is known in the region for his opposition to the 1991 Gulf War, his eagerness to leave both Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan now, and his opposition to the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan hideout.
At the same time those states, along with Pakistan, must be held to account for the support they have provided the Taliban over the past decades. Pakistan, which was able to manipulate the U.S. for years because of our need for its logistical support, is attempting to wean itself from the U.S. by kowtowing to Beijing on everything from concentration camps for Muslims in Xinjiang to port facilities in Gwadar. But there is still much that Islamabad needs from the U.S. and other advanced economies. Continuation of that support should be linked to the Taliban’s behavior in the present emergency.
The U.S. faces a challenge that is daunting and difficult. But Mr. Biden and his national-security team shouldn’t underestimate the resilience of the American people when they’re addressed with candor and with a clear sense of purpose.
The fall of Kabul has been a wake-up call for many Americans. We can’t afford to hit snooze now and go back to sleep. If we do, the next alarm may sound like the one that roused us on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Wolfowitz, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as deputy defense secretary, 2001-05.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
